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Mr. Asad Rizvi, Managing Director Walter Pakistan, delivered a session on Advertising to an MBA class of Marketing Strategy on 27 January 2016 at the Lahore School of Economics. As always, he received both complete attention and deep gratitude of the young and eager MBA participants.

Asad informed them that he had been in the advertising industry since 1995, and had never looked back. This is because advertising is the heart of marketing – look at Apple, Coke and Pepsi, driven by creative ads. Thus, a mystique has been created around advertising, enveloped as it is with glamour. But what people forget to understand is that it is not magic – advertising is underpinned by science.

With advertising comes branding. Brand is nothing but an emotional reaction, as the narratives of iPhone, Mercedes and Harley inform us. Consumers do not buy companies, they buy brands and they invest in them. The brands reach their highest level when they become a verb from being a noun.

Of course, all advertising comes from a good idea. And good ideas are not the property of the rich and famous, the intelligent and the well read. The famous ad “Thanda matlab coca cola” originated from someone who was working as a low-level employee in a neighbor country.

The highlight of the session was a series of creative ads shown by Asad – these included the Nespresso series.

In the question and answer session, Asad emphasized the importance of data to measure the impact of an ad. In response to issues of conflict between agency and client, he compared them to a marital couple – both are never happy but it is okay to have some differences. One should neve rile to one’s client. A bigger client, he opined, had its own advantages: One had more money to play with.

He was of the view that even though the internet was a big development, in Pakistan, TV would remain a very important medium for advertising. Even in the US as of now the TVC is a the centre of advertising.